This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section. Abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined below at the end of the specification but prior to the claims.
In the United States, some spectrum in the federal AWS system will become available to cellular operators on an authorized shared access (ASA) basis. Under ASA, a secondary user will share the spectrum with the federal government (the primary user) through authorization by the primary user. When authorization is granted, the secondary user has exclusive use of the spectrum. However, the primary user has priority access and can reacquire the spectrum as needed.
Currently, the 1755-1780 uplink and the 2155-2180 MHz downlink spectra are expected to be made available for LTE around 2015. This is 2×25 MHz of spectrum next to current AWS Band Class 4 (1710-1755/2110-2155 MHz) where companies are deploying LTE. The downlink portion will be cleared and auctioned off. The uplink portion, which is currently used by Federal Government users, may be available to mobile network operators via ASA.
The mobile network operators will have exclusive use of DL spectrum but will share UL spectrum with Federal Government users on an ASA basis. It would be beneficial to provide techniques to share the UL spectrum.